Sunday, September 29, 2013

On Sunday, September 22nd a 2-year old child was mauled to death in Gilbert, Arizona. On Monday the 23rd Samuel Eli Zamudio, also 2 years old, was mauled and killed in Colton, California. Then on Friday, September 27th, 5-year old Jordan Ryan was mauled to death in Baker City, Oregon.

These deaths bring to 19 the number of fatal dog attacks during calendar year 2013; 18 of the 19 deaths have been caused by pit bulls.

The fact of three fatal dog attacks within the space of six days establishes a new framework of horror; we have crossed a threshold in our relationship with pit bulls that cannot be ignored, and from which we will never return.

The circumstance that links each of the deaths this week, aside from the fact that all of the children were killed by pit bulls, is that each child was in the care of a babysitter or family member at the time of his death. This horrifying fact will make prosecutors reevaluate the liability of those who have the privilege and responsibility of caring for children.

Three deaths within a week should also make prosecutors question how much liability the parents must bear, for placing their children in the care of someone who exposes their child to such an extraordinary level of danger. The parents are ultimately responsible.

Three children may have been killed in the space of a single week, but that has not quieted the advocates of fighting breeds. Carla Hall of the Los Angeles Times has made a name for herself, and for The Times, by defending pit bulls following fatal attacks. In her mid-week editorial column Ms Hall claims:

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again -- a mauling by a pit bull is not an indictment of all pit bulls.

Experience proves otherwise, Ms Hall. Pit bulls are responsible for 95% of the fatal dog attacks this year. We may close our eyes as tightly as possible but the grossly disproportionate number of fatal pit bull attacks leaves nothing in doubt.

Following a week in which three children were killed by pit bulls your assertion sounds more like a desperate wish than a fact.

Statistics:
Statistics quoted on SRUV are from the 30+ year, continuously updated Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, published by Animal People. To view or download the current PDF click here. This page may also include information from Dogsbite and Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

On Sunday, September 22nd a 2-year old child was mauled to death in Gilbert, Arizona by four pit bulls. The following day 2-year old Samuel Eli Zamudio was killed by five of his family's pit bulls in Colton, California. The deaths this week bring to 18 the number of fatal dog attacks on humans in calendar year 2013 in the US.

Samuel Eli Zamudio

(Photo provided by family)

17 of the 18 canine homicides this year have been committed by pit bulls.

* * * * *

In recent years the US has been exporting their pit bull problem to Canada. Newspapers have carried accounts of recent attacks in British Columbia. We are writing to correct a number of misrepresentations in those accounts.

The Global News reported figures from the Canadian Veterinary Journal which claim that

between 1990 to 2007, there have been 28 deaths caused by dog-related injuries – one from a pit bull, four from a Rottweiler, four from ‘sled dogs’, seven from an unknown breed, and seven from an ‘other’ or a mixed breed.

Pit bull advocates in the US often attempt to camouflage pit bull attacks by assigning them to "unknown" breeds. If the unknown, mixed, and other categories in the CVMA report are combined with the single death attributed to a pit bull the numbers become more realistic. The combined categories of pit bulls, unknown, other, and mixed account for 15 of 28 or 53% of the total number of deaths. This number is closer to the figures reported by the more precise record-keeping in the US1 where pit bulls have consistently accounted for more fatal dog attacks than all other breeds combined.

The CBC carried a brief video interview with Geoff Urton of the BC SPCA, in which Mr Urton claims that there is no data showing that any specific breed accounts for more dog attacks than any other breed. Mr Urton may be thinking of all those nips by Chihuahuas, but if we consider only those attacks which cause death, grievous injury, and permanent disfigurement he is clearly wrong. Pit bulls and close pit bull mixes account for a grossly disproportionate number of those attacks.

April Fahr of the pit bull advocacy group HugABull has been widely quoted in her opposition to Burnaby's proposed revision of their animal bylaws. Ms Fahr claims that the report they’re using as a basis is basically a very brief number crunch that doesn’t align with any other numbers we’ve seen. Ms Fahr also claims that very little research into pit bulls has taken place.

Ms Fahr is wrong. We suggest she take a look at Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada. In addition, recent research on pit bulls and breed specific legislation 2 may give Ms Fahr added insight into BC's growing pit bull problem.

* * * * *

Last year following the attack in Whiterock, B.C. on four-year-old Emma-Leigh Cranford, whose throat was ripped open by the pit bull of a family friend, the editorial board of The Province made a courageous and eloquent call for a provincial ban on pit bulls. It is now time for the legislators to gather their courage and respond to that call.

Statistics:1 Statistics quoted on SRUV are from the 30+ year, continuously updated Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, published by Animal People. To view or download the current PDF click here. This page may also include information from Dogsbite and Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Prosecutors charged Alex Donald Jackson, the owner of the pit bulls that killed Pamela Marie Devitt on May 9, 2013, with second-degree murder, negligent ownership of a mischievous animal causing death or serious bodily injury, and other charges. Jackson entered a plea of “not guilty” on Wednesday, August 8, in a Los Angeles County Court.

In the second case 55-year-old Steven Hayashi faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. Hayashi's pit bulls killed two-year old Jacob Bisbee, his step-grandson, on July 22, 2010. Three of Hayashi's five pit bulls were in the garage when his son's step-children wandered in.

The dogs had previously killed two family pets and had shown aggression toward Jacob. Family members had asked Hayashi to get rid of the dogs, but as he told his wife, the dogs were his, and the children were his step-grandchildren, and they [the step-grandchildren] should leave before the dogs.

In the three years since Jacob's death Mr Hayashi has apparently experienced a change of heart about pit bulls.

Before the tragedy, Hayashi said he had always believed that pit bull owners - and not the dogs themselves - were the problem. "Well, I used to think that way. That's what got me into this mess, just thinking that they're regular dogs."

Mr Hayashi's new understanding came at a high cost. A peculiarity of pit bull advocacy is that many advocates are not wrenched away from their advocacy until they personally witness or experience an attack. And not a few pit bull advocates continue their advocacy even after they themselves have become victims of their own dogs.

* * * * *

A look at how several California papers have responded to these trials is informative. The trial of Alex Johnson has been nearly ignored by the LA Times. The attack and its aftermath received exemplary coverage by the news team, after which the Times over-compensated with numerous pit bull advocacy articles on their editorial pages (see here). The Times has now retreated into sullen silence on the trial.

The LA Weekly ran a brief piece when the charges against Johnson were announced in May. The emphasis of the article was the billboard-sized glamour shot of a pit bull:

Accessorizing a news account of a murder charge with such a beguiling image is weirdly discordant; unfortunately these glamorous studio images of pit bulls have become de rigueur in some quarters.1 Sherry Davis of the Bakersfield Californian ran a disgraceful column sympathetic to pit bulls in the wake of Ms Devitt's death.

The Contra Costa Times has had ample opportunity to cover pit bull attacks. The attack on Mr Hayashi's grandchild occurred in Concord, Contra Costa County, and on August 11 of this year 10-year-old Hunter Kilbourn was attacked by a neighbor's pit bull in Antioch, Contra Costa County. Hunter suffered massive head and facial injuries and faces years of reconstructive surgery. The June 17th mauling death of 6-year old Nephi Selu occurred a 45-minute drive away, in neighboring Alameda County.2

The CC Times has covered the mauling of Hunter and the trial of Mr Hayashi with the delicacy and finesse of a figure skater executing a candlestick spiral. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Hunter columnist Joan Morris offered a list of safety tips in the event of a pit bull attack, apparently without recognizing the irony at the heart of the article. Among the many misrepresentations is the conventional advocacy conceit that the

breed has existed for centuries and once was considered the darling of the dog world, good with children, loyal pets and stalwart defenders of the family home. It has only been in the past 30 years that pits have replaced Doberman pinschers as the most feared dog in the country.

Ms Morris seems blissfully unaware that she has repeated, practically verbatim, pit bull advocacy themes that are ubiquitous on the web. Or perhaps she is aware. In an article presumably about the disfiguring attack on a 10-year old child her comments demonstrate a callous disregard.

Two weeks later CC Times columnist Tom Barnidge also weighed in with an equivocal column. Mr Barnidge demonstrates his own susceptibility to pit bull web advocacy when he repeats the notorious ATTS deception, which Mr Barnidge hadn't heard of until two days ago.3

Both of these Contra Costa Times columnists, who live and work at the nexus of an important story, have produced timid columns, as if they were afraid of blowback from pit bull advocates. Perhaps it was not in their portfolios to produce incisive journalism but what they did produce is a disservice to their readers. Ms Morris and Mr Barnidge both may have been gulled into promulgating pit bull advocacy but the newspaper redeemed itself somewhat with exemplary coverage of the Hayashi trial by Malaika Fraley.4

* * * * *

The coverage of Steven Hayashi's trial and the death of Nephi Selu by Henry K Lee in the SF Chronicle is what journalism aspires to. Lee scooped the hometown journalists on their own turf by conducting a jailhouse interview with Hayashi the day after Jacob's death. During the interview Lee elicited the quotation above as well as Hayashi's admission that he ignored signs of aggression in his pit bulls. The interview was a once-in-a-lifetime career-making achievement for a journalist. But Lee's journalism is consistently excellent; he covered the breaking news of the Nephi Selu attack with the same professionalism.

In his coverage Mr Lee explores precedents for the Hayashi trial, interviews former prosecutors and legal analysts, analyzes the current prosecutor's choices and discusses the judicial philosophy involved, all without injecting either sentimentality or sensationalism into an elegantly written, concise account. The articles that resulted are a rare journalistic achievement.

* * * * *Notes:
1/ The Softer Side of Pit Bulls, Time Magazine, July 11, 2013. The timing of this article, by Los Angeles based author Paul Tullis, is not accidental. Pit bull advocates often follow the news of a death or mauling with strategically placed advocacy articles. The print edition of the Time magazine article is graced by six glossy billboard-sized studio portraits of pit bulls, all of them shot against a soft yellow background. So many articles about the softer side of pit bulls have been published in recent years, all of them so similar in their advocacy, that all of the authors could be jointly accused of plagiarizing from one another and creating numerous drafts of the same article.

2/ All of these attacks occurred within shouting distance of the epicenter of the California pit bull advocacy and the anti-BSL movement. See Preemption.

3/ With a little more research Mr Barnidge might have discovered that the ATTS was originally designed to test Schutzhund dogs and is not an accurate indicator of the explosive aggression of pit bulls. The ATTS study he refers to is the result of thousands of field tests which were compiled into a "study" by Scot Dowd, who, as it happens, is a breeder of pit bulls. Dr Dowd also offers online courses for pit bull advocates (example: Hugs O' Steel) through his own APBT Network University.

4/ Fraley's article appeared in the San Jose Mercury-News, which is also owned by the Bay Area News Group.

Statistics:
Statistics quoted on SRUV are from the 30+ year, continuously updated Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, published by Animal People. To view or download the current PDF click here. This page may also include information from Dogsbite and Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.